Role of TEXTing in tomorrow’s Healthcare

Reducing cost and improving quality of healthcare is one of the main concerns in today’s world. There are a lot of think tanks around the world working on this topic. One of the initiatives has started by Boston based non-profit organization mHealth Initiative, Inc. The organization is working on an approach called “participatory health”. In this approach all the stakeholders of the health system; providers, patients, payers, consumers, pharmacies, labs etc. need to have active participation in the system and the goal of this approach is to make people healthy.

To make this approach successful the organization is emphasizing on improved and simplified communications within stakeholders. The plan also talks about new communication-based disease management programs that would drastically reduce emergency and office visits, cutting healthcare costs in the process.

In this approach, TEXT messaging has a big role to play. Patients can take appointments using TEXT messages. Providers can send appointment and medication reminders to patients. Patients even can ask general enquiries, administrative or even non-healthcare related questions. Healthcare facilities can send Health promotions. Patients can reschedule appointments or ask for prescription refills.

All of this functionality is easily achievable but integrating this in existing systems to make it seamless is really a key here. Products like Hummingbytes communication APIs can come handy to deliver these solutions. The product delivers bi-directional communication and designed with open protocol.